This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brett Pesce
New Jersey Devils Defense
The 88th percentile of chances in Carolina, nine seasons of shutdown minutes, and 39 goals in 627 games.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | CAR | 69 | 4 | 12 | 16 | -7 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 85 | 4.7 | 18:46 |
| 2016-17 | CAR | 82 | 2 | 18 | 20 | +23 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 109 | 1.8 | 21:12 |
| 2017-18 | CAR | 65 | 3 | 16 | 19 | -6 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 3.4 | 20:54 |
| 2018-19 | CAR | 73 | 7 | 22 | 29 | +35 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 98 | 7.1 | 20:29 |
| 2019-20 | CAR | 61 | 4 | 14 | 18 | +7 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 104 | 3.9 | 21:53 |
| 2020-21 | CAR | 55 | 4 | 21 | 25 | +14 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 89 | 4.5 | 22:48 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 70 | 7 | 21 | 28 | +5 | 39 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 148 | 4.7 | 21:42 |
| 2022-23 | CAR | 82 | 5 | 25 | 30 | +11 | 43 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 144 | 3.5 | 22:01 |
| 2023-24 | CAR | 70 | 3 | 10 | 13 | +10 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 107 | 2.8 | 20:17 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 627 | 39 | 159 | 198 | +92 | 227 | 4 | 0 | 10 | 972 | 4.0 | 21:05 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
70 games in Carolina, 3 goals and 10 assists for 13 points, 20 penalty minutes, 20:17 a night and plus-10. He took 55.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,218 minutes, the 88th percentile, and his ice went 46-50 against an expectation of 56.69-46.11, all of it with the Hurricanes.
Eleven goals of scoring that did not arrive and four more conceded than the chances called for. Carolina finished last in the league at finishing and this is one of the places it shows; an 88th-percentile chance share that produced a 46-50 ledger is not a defensive failure.
The Finesse Game
107 shots at a median of 53 feet with 79 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 2.8 per cent against a career 4.01.
159 career assists in 627 games and 39 goals. There is no offence and there is no power play. What he does with the puck is give it to a forward in the first second he has it and get back to the blue line.
The Physical Game
He is 6-3 and 206 and defends with a long stick and a very early gap.
227 career penalty minutes in 627 games at a career 21:05 a night is one of the lowest rates in the league for that workload. He blocks shots, clears the crease and kills penalties, and he does not hit to hurt.
The Intangibles
A third-round pick in 2013 out of Tarrytown, New York, nine seasons and 627 games, all of it in Carolina, at a career plus-92.
He is 29 and has killed penalties for a club that finished first in the league at it. New Jersey has bought the least visible and probably the most useful defenceman available last summer.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“He is 6-3 and 206 and defends with a long stick and a very early gap.”
“He blocks shots, clears the crease and kills penalties, and he does not hit to hurt.”
“He blocks shots, clears the crease and kills penalties, and he does not hit to hurt.”
“He blocks shots, clears the crease and kills penalties, and he does not hit to hurt.”
“He blocks shots, clears the crease and kills penalties, and he does not hit to hurt.”
“What he does with the puck is give it to a forward in the first second he has it and get back to the blue line.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,218 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.1%
- 88th pct
- Shot attempts
- 58.4%
- 97th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 50 against. Expected: 56.7 and 46.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 37 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.40 a game
- Distance
- 2.86 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.1 mph
- 17th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 with CAR · 1218 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2023-24
- The club
- CAR took 56.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.1% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,218 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brady Skjei | 54.0% | 60.1% | 53.0% |
| Jordan Martinook | 53.0% | 56.0% | 62.5% |
| Jordan Staal | 58.0% | 54.1% | 62.3% |
54.0% together, 60.1% for him apart and 53.0% for Skjei apart. He was better away from Skjei, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Skjei.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
186 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.